resolutions and gaming

[smokinkane 0]

I have what may be an obvious question. When you play games, any games, at a higher or lower resoltion than your destop resultion you get screen shrink. The different resolution has a different refresh rate, and isn't formatted to fill your screen. Now is there anyway to make a game fill the screen regardless of resolution, I realize lcd's do this inherently. But I have a nice crt that I don't plan on getting rid of anytime soon. Thanks

[Relic 0]

Okay, instead of trying to answer your questions one at a time, I'll just give you the basics of what happens when gaming, so we cover just about everything, if I miss something, ask away, or someone else will fill in the holes.

 

Screen Resolution:

Your desktop resolution is the "native" resolution of your monitor, that's controlled by your vidcard, your monitor doesn't affect that, unless it can't support that particular resolution. In short, if the resolution your set your game to is higher or lower than your desktop resolution, it will not fully fill the monitor.

 

There are ways to force full-screen, but this is not good for your vidcard, nor monitor, don't do it.

 

Sometimes, depending on your vidcard, it's better to go with a higher resolution, and less "eye-candy", than a lower resolution and more eye-candy, as in AA/AF. A lower resolution with lots of eye-candy can make a game look perfect, but performance may suffer. Higher resolutions, without as much eye-candy, can give you the same "picture" quality, but with more performance. Find the "sweetspot" for your card, in each particular game, and create a profile. When you start your game, that profile will be loaded with the game, and all will be well.

 

Refresh Rate:

If you have vertical-sync turned on in your games, or in the control panel of your vidcard, you are limited by the game. If your refresh rate is set to 60hz, you'll have a hard time getting past 60FPS. If you disable V-Sync, you will get faster frame rates, but it some games, this means artifacts.

 

60hz is the most common, and genarally, "default" refresh rate of most monitors. 60hz drives me nuts, it gives me a headache. 70hz I can handle, 85hz is what I run my monitor at, very comfortable.

 

If you are a gamer, I do not recommend an LCD monitor, they can't keep up to games, and are prone to "ghosting", which means the last frame drawn is still there when the next one is drawn, they just can't keep up. The best LCD monitors out there still have this problem. The response time of an LCD is much slower than a CRT, so you get blur, or "ghosting", because it hasn't lost the old image before the new one is drawn on the screen.

 

Anymore questions, ask away.